


Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme - Chapter Two

by CavalierWolfe



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 09:36:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21097310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CavalierWolfe/pseuds/CavalierWolfe
Summary: Approaching the farmhouse, our weary Warriors find it to be under unusually heavy guard for a place that should have little more present than the summer harvest. What is being hidden away here?





	Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme - Chapter Two

Reiner sat and waited.

He had crept closer to the farmhouse as the night drew in, and the setting of the sun could gradually shield him from the prying eyes of any farmhand working late into the evening; surmising that out here in the countryside, oil was precious and the lanterns would not be lit unnecessarily.

Unfortunately, he did not see any farmhands.

Oh they were dressed like farmhands right enough. They had the roughspun jackets, flat caps and work shirts common to those that worked the land. Still, Reiner had gone through two different sets of military training and he liked to think this gave him certain powers of observation uncommon to those who didn't have the benefit of tactical lessons beneath the harsh gaze of the Warrior Corps instructors, or the ceaseless demands of Keith Shadis. These men looked like farmers; they dressed like farmers. But farmers they were not.

For a start, they moved with a certain upright stiffness that Reiner would have found very strange in farmhands, but less strange in soldiers. Their clothing was clean and unblemished by earth, and they did not have the air of men who had been hard at work in the fields all day. He remained crouched in the wheat, staring at them thoughtfully as if trying to puzzle out exactly what was going on here, when the crops to his immediate left shifted as Porco crouched down beside him.

''Relax'' murmured the other young man as he saw Reiner's muscles visibly tense. ''Just me. What's taking so long? Pieck's stable for the moment but I really want to get her some food and a bed.''

''Look at the men. Do they seem odd to you?''

Porco frowned as he gazed at the farmhands, and seemed about to answer sardonically; but as his mouth opened, it hovered there, working briefly up and down, before he closed it again...Reluctantly conceding the point. ''They.....they look like they're...''

''Guarding the place.'' Reiner finished. Both stared for a few moments more, lost in their shared thought. Indeed it did look that way; two men standing outside the farmhouse itself, leaning casually against the wooden panelling of its front walls....A third was walking towards them, engaging them in brief conversation, before he went inside...But the most telling was the fourth man, who stood atop the roof of the building itself, with a rifle clasped in his hands, gazing out languidly into middle distance.

Porco spoke first after they had taken all this in. His voice was a whisper, a mere murmur of uncertainty as the reality of what they had stumbled upon slowly sank in. ''They aren't just guarding a harvest, are they?''

''No. Look at the rifle.'' Replied Reiner, and Porco squinted up towards the man on the roof. It was a few moments before Reiner remembered that Porco had never been to Paradis before this operation, and so continued. ''That's a bolt-action rifle. The same as Marley uses. When I was here last, they were still using flintlock weapons.'' The flintlock was an older form of firearm, where a good soldier could expect to fire three or four rounds per minute, perhaps five if he was extremely good. In contrast, the machine tooled bolt-action rifles of Marley could be fired dozens of times in the same time frame. Porco, clarity dawning, nodded.

''So farmers wouldn't have new guns like that yet?''

''Exactly. These are soldiers. They're dressed like farmers but they're soldiers and we should leave. Right now.''

Porco turned a scowl to his comrade. ''No way. Pieck won't last the night without stopping somewhere safe and dry.''

''You said she was stable!''

''Well I.....'' Porco stammered, blushed, and growled beneath his breath. ''Nevermind. Look either we take these guys out together or I do it myself. I am not moving on until she's better.''

Reiner gazed down into the obstinate face of the other young man; so very like someone else with its set sneer and narrowed eyes. A face that he knew would never be budged; could never be swayed. Either they did this, or Porco transformed and levelled the place to get what he wanted.

''...Fine. '' He relented, reluctantly. But no transforming. We do it quick and quiet. It's all for nothing if we get discovered, so for the God sake don't let any of them get away.''

Porco's nasty smirk assured him rather chillingly, that that was not likely to happen.

''Historia.''

She ignored the voice for a few moments. Sat at her writing desk, a fountain pen flowing across the thick, creamy paper in her elegant script, not wishing to lose her sentence cohesion because someone couldn't be bothered to wait until she was done.

''Historia.'' The voice said again, impatiently. This time, she did stop her writing, and lowered the pen carefully to the wooden surface of the slanted desk. She turned cool blue eyes to the speaker, and frowned.

''You will address me properly, or not at all.''In truth, she never truly cared for using her queen voice if she could help it; it was reserved for important state occasions, or rarely, admonishments. This was definitely the latter case, and she looked up at the soldier with a stern frown that just made the rangy man grin in a rather unsettling manner.

''Got your attention didn't it?'' The man -for she had never bothered to learn his name- grinned wider, showing an assortment of yellow stumps where teeth had at one point been. These were new guards, and had replaced the ones originally left to her several weeks past. She wondered when the rotation would begin again, because she was not completely certain she could stand much more of them. All four were boorish, unpleasant, disrespectful; and all of that would have been easy to cope with, if she had even the slightest faith in any of them as soldiers. She missed her friends; Captain Roeg had not even deigned to allow the non-combatants to remain with her for company when the new guards had arrived. She suspected the man despised her, and despised particularly the life growing inside her belly. Her hand drifted absent-mindedly to the baby, resting atop the swell of her stomach protectively. It would not be long now.

''What do you want?'' She asked with a patience she didn't feel, her eyes gazing up at the leering man with icy courtesy.

''Temper temper! I just came to check you were getting ready for bed...There's a baby to look after, remember. Do you need any help changing? You're as big as a house now.''

The man's gall was sickening, and Historia took a deep breath in through her nose. She counted to four. Exhaled. Spoke.

''I shall be fine, thank you. You may leave.'' The soldier didn't budge. The worst part about it was, she was reasonably confident she could have taken him were it not for her present physical condition. As it was, she could not risk the child in a fight. But she knew that sooner or later, if these men were not removed from their duties soon, a confrontation was inevitable. She supposed it was due to the desperate need for recruits; with one thing and another, mainly the ever present threat of the newly revealed outside world, the military had been on an extensive recruitment drive. The exacting standards of the training corps were not always in play, and for the troops that were properly trained, they would often find themselves preparing for an invasion that may or may not come. Historia, despite her status as queen, found herself with substandard guardsmen; the logic being that her location was secure enough. But she suspected also that Roeg had lied to Commander Dok about the suitability of the men assigned to guard her. To him, she supposed she was just a mongrel pretender. She wondered often if he had been a supporter of the old king.

Still the soldier remained. She opened her mouth to speak once more, when a piercing crack sounded, fading into a reverberating echo outside. The shot of a rifle. Then there was shouting.

''…...Wait here!'' Hissed her unwanted companion, and bolted from the room. Gingerly, she eased herself from her chair, and shifted to her window, peering through the drapes into absolute darkness. Through the thick, low quality glass she could see little, but the sounds of shouting continued unabated. The rifle cracked once more.

She returned to her desk then, and pulled open the lower left drawer. She hooked a slender finger into the gap that was visible there, and pulled free the false bottom to reveal the true contents. There it was. Eren's gift.

''Just in case.'' He had told her as he had pressed it into her hands before their parting. ''Keep it hidden.''

Reiner grunted with pain. One hand was clasped around his mauled shoulder, the blood running freely over and around his fingers. It took all his effort not to transform; doing it so close to the farmhouse could destroy it, or at least blow the windows in; what if there were innocent people inside?

CLICK-CLACK. CRACK.

He dived aside as the third shot howled past his ear, spending itself in the earth beside him. He stumbled into the grass, almost tripping over the body of the first guard, the one who he had ended quickly with his combat knife. The second guard had seen however, and yelled out a warning. The guard on the roof had shouldered his rifle, and fired. Missed. Reloaded, fired again.

Reiner had been shot before; it was one of the first things that had happened to him after he had received his powers, to check they had taken effect. But he never got used to the blinding flash of pain, and the grinding feel of the bullet lodged in bone...Even the thunder spears hadn't been as bad in his opinion, because they either destroyed your capacity to think at all, or spread the burning pain out along your body. But God, did he hate being shot.

CLICK. The sound of the bolt ejecting the spent case. CLACK. The bolt being slammed home to chamber the next round. CRACK. The shot. It tore into his chest just as he was making to dive to the ground again, throwing him backwards into a spin against the dust. He coughed blood, his vision swam. Porco...

Suddenly, there was a brief cry, and a thump. No further shots rang out. Reiner waited a few moments, before he gingerly, painfully, raised himself from the grass on his elbows, to see Porco standing on the roof, waving the rifle down at him. The shooter was in a mangled heap on the ground beside the farmhouse, unmoving. The other guard, the one who had called out the alarm, was dead as well, dispatched with a heavy rock.

The plan had been simple enough; Reiner would try to sneak up and take the guards out one at a time, but if that failed, Porco was to take advantage of their focus on his comrade to take them out.

''Always have a plan B.'' Instructor Shadis had once said. ''No plan A ever survives contact with the enemy.'' Words of wisdom that had stuck with Reiner all these years. Right as always, instructor sir.

''You took your damn time!'' Reiner growled as he hauled himself to his feet, panting as he clutched his chest with one hand and his shoulder with the other, steam gently rising between his clenched fingers.

''Sorry!'' Yelled Porco, sounding anything but. ''I had to climb up from behind. You OK?'' He slid down the shingles of the roof on his bottom, and neatly dropped to the ground, landing much more favourably than the soldier he had shoved to his death. He checked the rifle over once, then shouldered it.

''Go get Pieck.'' Murmured Reiner through his clenched teeth. ''I'll check the house.''

Porco nodded eagerly, and turned to leave. But stopped before he'd jogged barely two paces. ''Weren't there four?''

Reiner blinked in confusion. ''There were. You...killed three didn't you?''

Porco turned to face him, frowning. ''Two. That means-'' His face exploded. A shower of steaming offal that spattered against Reiner's chest and got in his eyes, and before Reiner could even turn to face the threat, the same thing happened to him. Later on, if he concentrated, he could vaguely remember that he saw the man standing in the porch...He remembered rotten yellow teeth, and a sneering expression. And he heard it.

CLICK-CLACK. CRACK.

And Reiner's world was a flash of pain, and then swirling black. A riot of rainbow colours shone above his consciousness as he tumbled to the ground, starry skies lit up by streams of vibrancy that seemed to extend for miles and miles. He remembered thinking, before he lost consciousness completely, that it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. And then he thought no more.

Two boys lay there, inches from death, steam rising almost invitingly from twitching, helpless forms. And the rotten-toothed man grinned in triumph.


End file.
